


Nothing Wrong With Me

by Caseyrocksmore



Series: A Great Man (Maybe Even a Good One) [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, Gender disphoria, M/M, Menstruation, Prostitution, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Trans Sherlock, Transphobia, University, Violence, possibly autistic Sherlock, tw: rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-21
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-13 08:06:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1218823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caseyrocksmore/pseuds/Caseyrocksmore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Continuation of "A Girl's Name." </p><p>“You were in love with him." John paused, unphased. "And he broke your heart.”</p><p>“He broke more than just my heart. He broke /me/.” </p><p>Sherlock clears the air with John about his past with drugs, Victor Trevor, and all the hurt that went along with both. In for a penny, in for a pound.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Now

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings (rape, transphobia, drug use) apply for second chapter only.
> 
> Also, it should be pointed out that is story takes place in the future. In the context of this story, Mary was killed shortly after the events of series 3, and the baby was delivered prematurely, dying shortly thereafter. My short story "These Small Hours", which can be seen as a part of this 'verse but is not listed as a part of the series as it can also stand alone (since Sherlock's gender identity isn't mentioned), explains these details.

They fell in a tumble of limbs up the stairs, their clunking and thumping surely waking Mrs. Hudson as they made their way into their apartment. Sherlock had imagined this happening in many ways, every scenario acting itself through in his mind a dozen times, but never was it quite like this. Never with John supporting most of his weight as he dragged a sprained ankle behind him, sluggishly bleeding from a knife wound to the ribs, adrenaline pounding in both their ears from the thrill of the chase.

“You should’ve waited,” John huffed for the fourth (fifth?) time as he lowered Sherlock into one of the wooden chairs at the kitchen table, groaning as the movement shifted his bad shoulder.

And then it happened again: John pressed his lips firmly to Sherlock’s, just as sure as he had the first time, though the frantic passion of the first had subsided.

“I will next time,” Sherlock lied as John pulled away. John laughed, nearly hysterical from the high of the adrenaline: his own fix.

“No you won’t.”

Sherlock inclined his head, though it felt heavy on his shoulders. He had imagined their first kiss a million times, but never had it been with a dead madman on the ground under their feet, or the red-blue flash of police lights illuminating them, or a thousand other variables he would never have been able to predict.

John fetched the first-aid kit from under the sink and Sherlock shed his coat and shirt without preamble. The wound would only need a few stitches and could really be closed with a bit of tape in a pinch, but John would insist, and Sherlock was in no mood to refuse John anything he wanted.

The kiss had been spontaneous, unexpected, and completely different from any other kiss Sherlock had experienced. Kissing Janine had been a chore, pecking Molly’s cheek affectionate, the press of Victor’s dry lips foreign and confusing and nerve-wracking and exciting.

Kissing John hadn’t been like that. Instead, John’s hand grabbing the back of his neck was grounding, the warm bump of his mouth comfortable, the sweep of his tongue against his bottom lip _exhilarating_. Sherlock had needed a moment to process everything, wanted to pause the moment to remember the way John’s thumb was rubbing absently just under his ear, the exact movement of his chapped lips, the exact taste of his tongue; instead, he reacted in a way he hadn’t expected, surging against John and clacking their teeth together.

The world, which had fallen away with the first contact, came back to the both of them and they pulled apart. There hadn’t been any fanfare. No fireworks or sparks or whatever ridiculous things happened in movies and the romance novels John refused to admit he read. John’s lips turned up in a half-smile, and they left the scene together, Sherlock leaning on John for support though his ankle was not quite sprained enough to warrant it.

John pulled tight his last stitch and knotted the end, drawing Sherlock from the remembrance. He grimaced, murmured, “Sorry,” and cut the end. “Didn’t hurt you too much, did I?”

“Never,” Sherlock said, looking at John with the intensity he usually reserved for a particularly engaging corpse. John was neither unnerved nor insulted. Instead, he licked his lips and leaned forward, as though about to kiss Sherlock for a third time, before leaning back and deciding against it.

“We should, you know—”

“Talk,” Sherlock supplied, rolling his eyes. “Yes. I believe that is the protocol for this sort of development.”

“Do you want to go first?” John asked, leaning back against the solid table. “I’m not good at, well. Yeah.”

“What do you want? A declaration?” Sherlock asked, feeling rather silly. “You know where I stand.”

“I really don’t,” John said, laughing again breathlessly and sinking into the chair beside Sherlock. “I never do. I thought you were, you know.” When Sherlock didn’t respond, John sighed and rubbed his dominant hand over his face. “Asexual?”

“That’s... not entirely accurate,” Sherlock admitted, though he was loath to. “There have been few occasions where I—” He stopped, not quite knowing how to phrase what he wanted to convey. ‘Desired’ sound maudlin (and was inaccurate, anyway), but ‘attracted to’ made it sound too physical, where with John it was about so much more than that.

“Janine, yeah,” John agreed, nodding like he understood something. “And Irene. But I’m not— I don’t have much in common with either of them.”

“Janine meant nothing to me,” Sherlock quickly corrected, waving his hand as though physically clearing the air. “Irene was... an exception. I never engaged in any sort of physical relationship with either of them, however, no matter what the tabloids—”

“They were all lies? Jesus, Sherlock, you should have had her arrested for slander!”

“Pointless. People believe what they want anyway, and there was no way of proving any of it was a lie without coming out to the public, which I am not prepared to do.”

“Come out about—” John’s eyes automatically flitted to the two perfect surgical scars, faded silver with time but still visible an inch below each nipple.

“Being a trans man, yes. Janine had no idea, as far as I’m aware.” He would have known if she had figured it out. “Irene was more perceptive, but she never confirmed her suspicions.”

John shook his head, scratched at his five o’clock shadow. He had dark circles under his eyes, but he was far too wired to sleep. It was going to be a long night.

“You’ve got lots of questions,” Sherlock stated, and, knowing from the way John’s fingers twitched that he was about to protest, plowed on, “You can ask me anything you please, but perhaps we should move this to the living room? I’d like to elevate my ankle.”

The doctor in John responded immediately, helping Sherlock to his feet and then manoeuvring him into his chair by the fireplace, even going so far as propping up Sherlock’s foot for him. Normally, he wouldn’t allow such coddling, but he was giving John time to work out the most pressing questions. He was reminded of the trepidation he had felt upon having come out to Victor, about all the questions he imagined Victor having (and preparing an answer for all of them). The result was different this time, not in part due to John’s already knowing.

“Ask away.” Sherlock steepled his fingers under his chin and mentally prepared himself for the onslaught of highly personal questions that usually arose in this situation. Perhaps John had done his research and wouldn’t ask the silliest of questions (the “When did you first know?” and “Have you altered your genitalia?” kind; questions that, asked of any cisgender person, would seem ridiculous).

“Lestrade doesn’t know that you’re transgender.”

Sherlock blinked, not expecting that question quite so soon. “No.”

“But you’ve known him for years.” Sherlock inclined his head in agreement. “So you transitioned young, then.”

“I was three when I first asked my parents to refer to me using male pronouns. I don’t even remember the occasion, having not formed permanent memories of that time.”

“Three.” John didn’t seem nearly as surprised as Sherlock expected. “And your parents were okay with that? And Mycroft?”

“Mycroft was ten years old at that time. Children are highly adaptable, not nearly as prejudiced as adults. My mother had the hardest time adapting to the idea, though she did, with time. By the time I was old enough to start hormone replacement, she was my biggest champion.” Sherlock paused, imagining a different story, one where his parents institutionalized him, or worse, rather than accept that he knew himself better than they did. “I was incredibly lucky, in that regard.”

John nodded. “Who else knows?” he asked after a moment.

“Molly, of course. And two men with whom I went to university, Victor Trevor and Sebastian Wilkes.” Victor’s name tasted like bile on his tongue. After so many years, the resentment had never eased, the disgust never faded.

John seemed to put the pieces together, remembered the charming man from the bank’s fake smile as he asked, “Friend?” with such surprise, and John’s quick correction, “Colleague,” falling so easily into place.

“Sherlock, I’m—”

“Sorry, yes, yes. Don’t dredge it up. Wilkes is one of those people you delete, nothing more.”

“But you haven’t deleted him.”

“No.”

John leaned forward as he asked, genuinely curious. “Why not?” Sherlock could see the wheels turning; what made this man more important than the solar system and a dozen other things Sherlock found arbitrary.

“Because he was friends with Victor.”

“And Victor was...?”

Victor was... Everything. Nothing. Sherlock wasn’t sure how to answer. He decided to be as honest as he could, though he could have easily lied.

“My roommate, for a while, and a friend. I wanted more.”

“You were in love with him.” John paused, unphased. “And he broke your heart.”

It wasn’t a question, but a statement. John was not imperceptive (he would make a better detective than much of Scotland Yard), and Sherlock daren’t lie to him right now.

“He broke more than just my heart. He broke _me_.”

John shook his head. “I find that hard to believe. You’re here, now, and you’re—” Sherlock could see a number of words ready on John’s tongue: perfect, whole, strong, mine. All but the last were inaccurate. John shook his head, not saying any of them.

“It’s a long story.”

“I don’t have anywhere to be.”

Sherlock folded his hands together in his lap and stared at them, thinking. “It’s not a happy story. It might change your opinion of me.” He swallowed, looked up from his hand and met John’s eyes. “You might not want me anymore, after you know.”

“That’s impossible.”

Sherlock was not convinced, but John was watching him attentively, waiting for either the story or a refusal to tell it. But when could he ever refuse John anything? Especially now.

“We met during a campus tour because his dog bit me.”


	2. Then

Sherlock followed the tour with a sour expression, bored out of his mind. His parents had insisted that he at least take a look at the campus where he would be spending the next four years (as if it would take him that long) before he accept their offer of admittance. Sherlock had planned to simply take a walk through the grounds, poke his nose into the labs and the library and be done with it— Mycroft had somehow gotten him signed up for a guided tour, which should be marketed as a new form of torture.

“And now we come to the gymnasium, with its wonderful range of athletic centres, including a new jogging track...” Sherlock attempted to maintain his sanity by quietly devising a way of killing the peppy tour guide that wouldn’t get him arrested. Alternatively, perhaps a more feasible plan was to find a way of injuring himself so that he could demand medical care and leave the tour... Was it worth it to break an ankle?

It turned out to be an unnecessary exercise, for as the group broke up for a moment of self-perusal of the university’s Botanical Gardens, a rather large dog appeared from around a thicket of shrubbery and attached itself to the very ankle he’d been contemplating breaking.

“Oh god, I am so sorry. Down, Gloria! Drop it!”

The dog, a bull terrier, let go on the final command and sat back on her meaty haunches. The flat top of her skull was presented to Sherlock at an angle of submission as her owner appeared behind her, holding the end of a broken leash.

“Are you okay?” the owner demanded, though something in his eyes belied his indifference. He couldn’t have cared less if Sherlock had been grievously injured, but he was a good actor— his performance attracted the attention of the tour guide, who hurried over to them.

The young man was obviously a student, not much older than Sherlock but of considerable wealth, an avid cyclist and a habitual smoker. A recreational drug user, a student of biology— no, chemistry— new money not old... Sherlock was intrigued. He quickly schooled his features into a look of pain, noting the dog owner’s surprise at the sudden shift.

“It hurts a lot,” Sherlock whined, lifting his leg and grabbing his ankle with both hands. “I think I need to visit the infirmary.” There was a little blood under his fingers when he discreetly probed beneath the edge of his trousers; the bite had broken the skin, but only just. It was not a serious injury.

“I’ll help you,” the dog owner said, handing off the newly leashed dog to the baffled tour guide and slipping an arm around Sherlock’s waist. Sherlock had to physically stop himself from flinching away, not expecting the intimate contact.

“Why did you leave your dog?” Sherlock asked once they had limped together out of earshot.

“Not my dog, per se,” the young man— apparently not a dog owner— answered. “My roommate dropped out and left her with me. He recently called to say that he isn’t coming back for her, so I’m stuck caring for an occasionally vicious animal that neither likes me nor respects my authority.”

He was both soft- and well-spoken, obviously private school educated, but there was something about him that wasn’t quite adding up. Sherlock, for some reason, _liked_ him. He was interesting, a fox among rabbits.

“What about you? You aren’t hurt as badly as you’re acting. I saw you— from fine to near tears in three seconds flat.”

Sherlock forced back a smile, focussed on making his limp more perceptible as they walked into the building. “I actually owe you my gratitude. Your careless dog ownership just got me out of the most boring campus tour in existence. I was contemplating breaking my _own_ ankle before the dog had her way with it.” The admission earned Sherlock a laugh. For some reason, the reaction pleased him.

When they reached the waiting room, the young man introduced himself for the first time, his eyes bright with curiosity. “Victor Trevor,” he said, extending his hand once the receptionist has left with Sherlock’s clipboard full of information. “And you?”

“William Sherlock Holmes,” Sherlock replied, ignoring the proffered hand. “You may call me Sherlock.”

“Are you in the market for a roommate, Holmes?” Victor asked, blatantly ignoring the second part of Sherlock’s introduction, just as Sherlock had ignored his handshake. “A position has just opened up in my dorm, and I have a feeling you’re just the man to fill it.”

“Actually—”

Sherlock’s answer was cut off by the arrival of the nurse, who whisked him into an examination room. He returned a few minutes later, having had his wound cleaned and bandaged quickly. Victor was still in the waiting room when he returned, prescription in hand for an antibiotic and a mild painkiller.

“Did they at least give you the good stuff?” he asked when Sherlock reappeared, walking him out.

Sherlock handed him the prescription, felt vindicated by Victor’s scoff. “I can get you better.”

“Won’t need it,” Sherlock countered. “It’s barely a scratch.”

“Who cares whether you need it or not?” Victor laughed again, and it was the kind of laugh you never forgot, bull-bodied and warm, inviting and careless. “Trust me, kid, I can get you high enough to make it through _three_ campus tours.”

Sherlock mentally cancelled the request he had put in for a private room. Mycroft would take care of the paperwork. This could be the beginning of something very special.

Victor Trevor was like no one Sherlock had ever met before. The eve of their first meeting, Sherlock gave the man a list of his most disturbing qualities— Victor’s, not Sherlock’s— and a fairly detailed family history, all gleaned from the knot in his tie and the spring in his step and a dozen other little things that no one else would’ve noticed. Anyone else’s reaction would have been one of anger, violence, or indignation; Sherlock had experienced all three in the past. Victor’s was different.

“How could you tell all that about me?” he asked. Sherlock quickly explained his methods of observation and deduction, a range of skills he had been cultivating since early childhood. Victor listened to him with interest and attention through Sherlock’s ramblings. And even after all that, he didn’t run.

“Where did you learn how to do that?” he asked, clearly astonished. “That’s... amazing.”

Sherlock waved off the question (not wanting to explain about socialization and the skills of observation he had developed as a child for some very specific reasons) and instead asked to visit Victor’s dorm for an application.

The paperwork was signed the next morning. They were to be roommates.

Victor didn’t want him to hide his talents, like Mycroft, like his other acquaintances, like his parents. Instead, he asked Sherlock to show him over and over, on passing strangers and other students and, eventually, Victor’s own friends.

Victor invited him to parties, where Sherlock sat and observed, for the most part, the antics of the average university student. Victor’s friends didn’t like him much, didn’t like the way he could tell which one of them was lying about hooking up in the bathrooms at the club. They slowly got used to his solid presence a half-step behind Victor, though they continued to be wary of him.

For Sebastian’s birthday, Victor’s circle of friends was treated to a night out at a strip club. The place was seedy, and despite sitting at the far end of their table, as far from the undulating bodies of the strippers as possible, Sherlock was sure he’d be discovering glitter in undesirable places for weeks afterwards. He said as much to Victor, who laughed long and hard, clapping Sherlock hard on the back and signaling the waitress for a round of shots.

“Just enjoy it, Will!” he said over the booming music, trying out another inane nickname for Sherlock.

(He’d done every variation of William already, and of Sherlock. The name “Holmie” had gotten a laugh out of Sebastian and had thus stuck around for a few days, before everyone forgot about it. On one memorable occasion, he’d introduced Sherlock as his “girlfriend Sherly,” which had caused Sebastian to fall off his stool before saying that if Victor couldn’t tell the difference between a man and a woman, he must’ve had a pint too much. It was the one occasion that Sherlock thought he liked Sebastian, a little.)

The baseline of the strip club’s music was reverberating through Sherlock’s nervous system, thrumming in his sternum; he felt the strange desire to dance, but resisted the urge to squirm to the music in fear of embarrassing Victor or himself.

When one of the strippers put on a special show for the birthday boy, Sherlock was suddenly conscious of Victor’s reactions; they were an exact mirror of Sebastian’s, across the table. A half-second after each flush, each trail of Sebastian’s eye over the stripper’s body, each jerk of his chin, Victor performed the same action, with surprising accuracy. Sherlock, who had been emulating Victor’s behavior for weeks at that point, trying to capture the raw masculinity he seemed to exude, realised that he had been imitating the behaviour of a homosexual man imitating the behaviour of the heterosexual man he was infatuated with. It was all very convoluted. Sherlock had never been good at deducing motives of the heart.

Victor’s crush on Sebastian was painfully obvious from that point onward, from the jealous twitch of his fingers when Sherlock correctly deduced which dancer had slipped Sebastian her telephone number to the skitter of his tongue over his lips when Sebastian opened the top two buttons of his polo.

Sherlock was not jealous of Sebastian, though he was intrigued by what drew a man like Victor— rich, handsome, charming, manipulative— to a man like Sebastian, with his boring accountant talk and his fleshy cheeks. Sherlock’s dislike of Sebastian may have been colouring his judgment. But he wasn’t jealous of the attention Victor lavished on Sebastian.

It was only a few months into his relationship with Victor, things changed. The drugs changed things.

The first time he had gotten high with Victor, he’d been in the middle of an episode. Victor had found him under his bed with all the lights off, a scarf tied around his head to block out the sounds and the sights. Overstimulation had been a problem for him on and off since he was a toddler. Victor hadn’t asked what was wrong, instead shimmied under the bed next to Sherlock with quite some difficulty and tucked Sherlock’s head under his chin.

“You want something to numb it? Dull it down?” he asked soothingly, petting Sherlock’s hair like he would pet an anxious animal. “I’ve got dope. It might help.”

Sherlock couldn’t have refused if he wanted to. “Please,” slipped past his lips, hazy and slow. He was beyond rational thought, right at the apex of the torture, a thousand voices and images and sounds and smells pressing into his skull, pounding along his nerves like physical blows to his body.

The needle prick to the tender skin of his elbow focussed him, and spread of numb up his arm was like a cool compress applied to a burn. Sherlock inhaled sharply, found the smells dulling, the sensations fading with the high. He pulled off his makeshift blindfold, panting, and watched as Victor rolled up his own sleeve and gave himself the same treatment. The track marks on his arm drew Sherlock’s attention, and he began running his fingers lightly over them, fascinated, focussed. The cacophony of sound had been muted, the panic eased.

Sherlock sighed, “Thank you,” and was wrapped in Victor’s arms, hidden by the bedskirt and the gloom of drawn blinds in the afternoon.

After what felt like hours but could have been only minutes, the high began to fade. Sherlock chased it, focussing on that feeling, trying to force himself into that place again by sheer power of will. Victor was less disturbed, instead yawning and stretching, petting Sherlock’s hair periodically as he came down.

“I’m hungry, you want Chinese?” he said, as though this was the normal reaction to something so devastating as losing the perfect level of concentration. Sherlock must have nodded, because when Victor returned, he was carrying takeaway Chinese food.

Victor attempted to teach Sherlock how to use chopsticks, laughing softly and gripping Sherlock’s fingers the right way over and over again. Sherlock couldn’t concentrate, became frustrated, and threw the damned things across the room. Victor was chuffed. He watched with unusual interest Sherlock pick up the various components of his dinner with his fingers, took a sharp breath when Sherlock licked sweet and sour sauce from the length of his index finger.

Attraction was a fickle thing, Sherlock learned. The heated looks reserved for Sebastian were turned on him in the following weeks, the undivided attention, the tender smiles and warm eyes that Sebastian had mistaken as devoted friendship. Sherlock knew better, but he wasn’t bothered.

Sherlock and Victor’s relationship became largely symbiotic. Sherlock deduced the secrets of those around him, devised the best methods of blackmail and trickery, aided Victor with his chemistry homework when he skipped his lectures. Victor, in turn, provided Sherlock with drugs and company during the dark hours when his brain wouldn’t quiet.

They did things Victor didn’t do with his other friends. They got high and went to the cinema at two am, loudly heckling the actors on the screen when they were the only ones in the audience, quietly pointing out inaccuracies and slipups when they weren’t. The press of Victor’s mouth against his ear, whispering commentary to a boring film Sherlock couldn’t care less about, was a thrill he never tired of.

They broke into the swimming pool where Carl Powers had died and went swimming in the dark. Victor introduced Sherlock to the nightlife and the lowlifes, to illegal fun and cheap thrills.

Sherlock taught Victor the art of deduction. He was a quick study, pointing out things about strangers that Sherlock wouldn’t have cared to pick up on.

“Dr. Pollock is cheating on his wife.” “Professor Wolfe left her husband, finally.” “Why didn’t you tell me Geoff was shagging Vivian?”

Sherlock became more careful as Victor grew more perceptive. Though he had been prone to walking around their dorm in his sleepwear, a cotton t-shirt and flannel pyjama bottoms, he started taking new precautions. He took to packing even when he slept and wearing layers on top like he used to as an adolescent, before he’d had top surgery. Though there was no reason to bind anymore, he felt the urge to do so often, and sometimes used tenser bandages to do it even though there was no need.

When Victor found his stash of needles, Sherlock lied. He said he was being cautious about shooting up, making sure he had a clean supply. Victor was placated by that and even asked Sherlock for a clean needle on occasion, when he’d used the same one a few times too many.

Sherlock was concerned about blood borne pathogens that could be lurking in the needles Victor brought from wherever he got the drugs, from the sex partners he deduced Victor had been hiding from him. He never brought anyone home, but Sherlock knew. Most of them were women; Victor was still trying to convince himself that he could be straight, but the nights when he returned smelling of perfume were also the nights that he came home high or drunk off his ass. Sherlock suspected prostitutes, though not expensive ones. Victor would spare no expense when it came to getting good drugs (the cheap ones were laced, he said), but the women he screwed in alleyways were nothing to him.

Victor was a bit of a sociopath. Sherlock had noticed early on the lack of empathy he had for others, admired his ability to shut out the useless feelings that plagued the average person. The only time Victor showed any genuine emotion was with Sherlock, when they were curled up in his closet riding out the high, or sprawled together in the university’s Botanical Gardens where they met, their fingers not quite entwined— plausible deniability should anyone see them.

Sherlock thought Victor was in love with him.

Final exams were looming, but neither man was conscious of that fact when they shot each other up in the dorm. Sherlock was on the edge of an episode, skirting around it, over it, like a water strider over the surface of a pool. They had been experimenting with different ways of controlling the sensory overload Sherlock seemed to be experiencing more and more often; they tried blocking all outside stimulants, upping his dosages, drowning out the _too much_ with _so much more_.

That night, Victor turned his CD player on loud and sang along to an American country artist whose name Sherlock could not for the life of him remember. It was something about money, but when Victor talked about him, all Sherlock could hear was white noise. The loud music was helping, as did the prick of the needle and the rush of calm that came afterward.

Victor, still singing, swayed lightly back and forth as he disposed of the materials, sealing them in a black rubbish bag that he would drop directly into the dumpster, rather than have it go through the dorm garbage system. Sherlock watched him idly from where he was sprawled on the bed, the bliss seeping into him slowly.

“ _You get a wiggly worm_ ,” Victor howled (he wasn’t a very good singer), grabbing Sherlock by the hands and pulling him to his feet. “ _And then you watch him squirm_!” Victor’s long fingers dove into Sherlock’s armpits and the hollows of his sides where he’d lost weight, tickling mercilessly. Sherlock shrieked, twisting away from the touch, but Victor was brutal. “ _While you put him on a hook_ —”*

He missed a few lyrics while he was tickling Sherlock, laughing hysterically while Sherlock tried to pull away, breathless but laughing, too. Victor’s hands were warm on his skin, strong and calloused from guitar strings.

“Dance with me, Sherlock,” Victor hummed, his hands moving from Sherlock’s ribs to his waist, pulling him in close. Sherlock dropped his head to Victor’s chest, allowed Victor to move him to the music. It wasn’t Sherlock’s kind of music; he preferred complicated orchestra pieces, classic waltzes and foxtrots and Big Band music. But he danced alone in his room to those, playing along with his violin or just moving his arms like an almighty conductor. He wished he could have taken dance lessons of some kind— ballet, perhaps, would have suited his figure— but dancing with a partner was certainly different, maybe even _better_.

Victor’s CD changed songs but rather than stop dancing, he simply switched positions; he laid one hand on Sherlock’s shoulder, the other in the curve of his hip and led him through a simple waltz. Sherlock allowed himself to be led, keeping rhythm with a finger tapping in the small of Victor’s back and the steady beat of his heart under Sherlock’s ear.

“Sherlock, the song is over.”

Sherlock hadn’t noticed the music change from slow to fast again, he’d been so focussed on Victor. A smile tipped up the corner of Victor’s mouth, making soft around the edges and perfect for kissing. Victor seemed to think so too, because he leaned down then, slowly, as if he wasn’t sure he was allowed to, even with their bodies pressed together like this.

Sherlock tipped his face up expectantly, and then their lips met. Victor’s lips were dry and felt strange against his own. He wasn’t sure quite what to do with his hands and his heart was racing a mile a minute. Victor pulled away and licked his lips, looking at Sherlock like he had never seen him before.

“Have you ever...?”

Sherlock shook his head. “No, I’ve never kissed anyone before.”

Victor whistled low in his throat and then tucked his face into the flushed crook of Sherlock’s neck, laughing softly. Sherlock stiffened, but Victor simply held him tighter.

“I’m not laughing at you. I meant with a bloke, but— _anyone_. Wow.” His breath was hot against the shell of Sherlock’s ear, and he shivered, though he felt incredibly hot, not cold. “I’m flattered.”

Victor’s hands cupped his face, and he leaned in again, pressing his open mouth to Sherlock’s closed lips. Sherlock was nervous to the point of nausea, but tried to take each new development in stride. He mirrored the movement of Victor’s lips hesitantly, tilting his chin and relaxing his jaw as Victor took the lead as he had for their waltz. Victor thoroughly explored Sherlock’s mouth and then his throat, sucking the delicate skin over his pulse between his teeth while Sherlock clung to his shoulders, panting. He walked Sherlock backward toward the bed, pushed him down onto it and swung a leg over his hips.

“Wait. We should—” Sherlock’s mind was hazy. Something was wrong with this picture, something was wrong with the press of Victor’s hand against the fly of his trousers. As though through a fog, Sherlock moved sluggishly, pulling away before Victor’s clever fingers could open his fly. “Stop. We should stop.”

Victor paused, looked at Sherlock with unprecedented surprise. “Too fast?” he asked, trying to hide his disappointment. It was harder with the heavy line of his erection against Sherlock’s hip.

“We should talk first,” Sherlock managed, the fog clearing enough to see reason. If Victor reached down his pants and didn’t find what he expected, the reaction would be worse if they talked about it first. “We need to talk about this first.”

With trepidation, Sherlock manoeuvred out from under Victor to instead lie next to him. He was going to do this. He was going to tell someone outside his immediate family for the first time. His heart was pounding a tattoo against his ribcage, his mind working double-time to combat the drugs in his system. Perhaps the intoxication would give him the courage to do this.

“Whatever you need,” Victor said, clearly hoping to continue amorous activities as soon as possible. Sherlock wasn’t opposed, though he obviously needed to get this out in the open first. Victor routinely had sex with women; it wasn’t beyond speculation that he would be okay with finding out that Sherlock’s genitals weren’t quite what one would expect for someone of his gender.

Sherlock laughed, realising for the first time how that might sound to someone who had no experience with the trans community. “I don’t know where to start,” he admitted. Victor nodded, leaning up on his elbow and looking sympathetic.

“How about I start?” he asked, and then, instead of waiting for an answer, plowed on: “I like you a lot. I think you’re incredible. You’re one of a kind, William Sherlock Scott Holmes, and if you’re amiable, I’d very much like you to bugger me.”

The admission seemed to take a lot out of him, because it came out in a rush. Sherlock opened and closed his mouth a few times, stunned. “I’m amiable,” he answered after a moment of contemplation. “However, the logistics of such a request are unfortunately in question. You see—” He took a deep breath and let it out again. “I lack the necessary equipment for the job.”

Sherlock immediately wanted to punch himself in the face. A joke? He could have breached the subject in any number of serious ways, and he _went for a joke_?

Victor frowned. “You what?”

“I don’t have a penis.” There. At least that was suitably serious.

At Victor’s incredulous glance at his groin, Sherlock reached down the front of his trousers and pulled out the balled up sock he’d packed with that morning. His fly fell flat against his public bone between the hollow of his prominent hips without the sock to hold it up. Any doctor would be able to see from the shape of his iliac crest that they were hips meant to bear children, so matter how unshapely his had become with the weight lost since he’d started using.

“Was there an accident?” Victor asked in a hushed voice. “Or did someone cut it off? Jesus.”

“No! No.” Victor wasn’t getting it, and Sherlock was getting frustrated, despite the mellowing effect of the drugs in his veins. “I wasn’t born with one. I was assigned female at birth.”

Victor sat up, his back muscles tightening. “You’re a woman?”

“No, no. Only in body, not in mind. And I’ve gone to lengths to correct that— hormone injections and surgery—”

Victor seemed not to hear him. He stood up from the bed, looking at the far wall for a moment before whirling on Sherlock. “You’ve been lying to me since the day we met!” Sherlock could almost see his mind working, the frantic pace of a brain rewired. The drugs often made Victor antsy while they had the opposite effect on Sherlock, and the difference was rearing its head now. “You tricked me!”

“I didn’t trick you. I merely neglected to tell you about my genitals the day we met. Is that common etiquette nowadays? To disclose what ones genitals look like?”

In all the scenarios he had run for this moment, this hadn’t been one of them. He’d been expecting certain questions (“When did you know you were a boy?” “Have you had _the_ surgery?” “No? Are you planning to?”) but never this sort of fury directed at him.

“You lured me into bed with you,” growled Victor, pointing a finger at Sherlock. The finger could have been a gun, for the way it raised Sherlock’s hackles. “Under false pretenses.”

“I didn’t.” Sherlock scooted to the edge of the bed and swung his legs over, feeling at a distinct disadvantage. “I did no such thing and you know it.”

“I don’t know _anything_ anymore!” Victor yelled, throwing his hands up in the air. “I don’t know who you are! You let me get close to you, only to tell me you’re a woman—”

“I’m _not_ a woman!” Sherlock shouted, raising his voice for the first time. “I’m trying to _tell_ you that, if you’d just _listen_ —”

“No, you’re not a woman.” Victor was practically hissing, his voice lowering with venom. “You’re an unnatural creature.”

“I’m a man just like you,” Sherlock growled, standing to defend himself. He wasn’t going to take these abuses sitting down. He wanted to leave, but his legs felt like jelly and a single step toward the door made him unsteady on his feet. He wanted to throw up, to scream, to rip his own hair out.

“You’re not a man!”

Victor hit him. His open palm collided with Sherlock’s cheek and the sound seemed to reverberate through the room, even over the sound of Victor’s American country music still playing in the background. Sherlock felt sure that the world would slow down again, like it did when he first took that first hit under the bed with Victor curled around him, but instead the slap seemed to jumpstart everything.

It was all so fast, too fast to process. Victor lunged at him, yelling it again, “You are not a man!” and closed his hands around Sherlock’s throat. They fell to the floor, no space in between to gasp in a lung full of air. Sherlock’s head bounced on the carpet, disorienting him; Victor continued to yell, tightening his grip on Sherlock’s windpipe, and as Sherlock’s hands scrabbled at Victor’s wrists, his mind was still in overdrive; _he’ll use the trans panic defence in court and he’ll get away with my murder. I’m going to die, and he’s going to get away with—_

Victor let go. Sherlock gasped and spluttered, turned his head to the side. The black spots in his vision hadn’t faded when he felt Victor’s hands on his fly, roughly pulling open the button. He couldn’t focus on what Victor was saying— “I’ll show you a man!”— could only kick out and flail as Victor, bigger than him, dropped his weight on Sherlock’s chest and wrenched his trousers down.

He’d always wondered what Victor’s hands would feel like on his hips, holding him down. Instead of the flare of arousal the thought usually brought him, the action itself— Victor’s bruising grip as he flipped Sherlock onto his stomach— made Sherlock retch into the carpet. Victor held his head down with one hand, grinding Sherlock’s face into the floor so that he struggled for air.

Sherlock fought back. He cried and struggled and clawed and _fought_. He was dizzy and disoriented and he hurt in places he didn’t know could hurt. Not just his genitals, when Victor forced himself inside without preamble, but other places too, his gums and lips where they got carpet burn, the backs of his knees where Victor placed his own for leverage, his toes where he bent them backward trying to force himself out of an unwinnable position.

And all the while in the background the country boy crooned, “ _When this world turns you down, not a true friend can be found. Remember_ _me, I’m the one who loves you..._ ”**

When it was over, Victor grabbed some of his things and then left. Sherlock didn’t bother to do more than roll onto his back, couldn’t even contemplate cleaning himself up. His nose blew bloody bubbles with every exhale, splattering them against his cheek. There was a mess on his thighs that he’d rather not even think about, let alone deal with.

He wanted to cry. He wanted to punch someone. He wanted his mother to take him in her arms and coo about her darling little boy—

But she could never know about this. And certainly Mycroft could never know about this; he thought Sherlock was weak as it was, thought he needed protecting from the world.

So he picked himself up off the floor. He threw his clothes in the black rubbish bag Victor had left the used needles in, the remnants of their drug use just hours ago. He avoided his eyes in the mirror when he stepped into the shower to clean himself up, trying hard not to retch up what little he’d eaten in the last few days as he scrubbed his skin raw until the water ran cold.

He had been experimenting with the Method of Loci lately, the development of a mind palace to better focus his mental energies and store memories; part of what he had been trying was deleting information that was useless for his purposes. Deleting memories could be beneficial for a scholar, removing extraneous information so that there was more room for the important data. (Victor had thought it was a great idea to build a mind palace.) Victor was extraneous.

Sherlock got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around his hips. He stumbled to the sink, grabbing the basin with both hands as he tried to breathe through his swollen nose.

“I’ll delete you,” he said, bowing his head in front of the sink. After a moment he lifted his face and met his own eyes. He wouldn’t delete Victor. He couldn’t. It would mean deleting all the wonderful things Victor had brought out in him, the extraordinary feelings and highs and lows, and much of his first year of university. Sherlock’s life had revolved around Victor for so long, he wasn’t sure how to separate the two. Victor was a virus, and Sherlock had been infected.

A quick probing of his aching face assured him that he hadn’t suffered any facial fractures, but a preorbital hematoma was already forming around one eye, darkening the tissue to a sickening purple. He spent an unfair amount of time pulling carpet fibres from between his bicuspids and incisors, where they’d become wedged in the struggle. By the time he was done, his gums were bleeding horribly, and one glance at his face could show any careful observer what had happened to him.

Sickened, Sherlock dressed himself quickly, avoiding looking at his body any more than necessary. Every movement was painful, every muscle spasm agony. He needed something to dull the pain, to blur the lines between reality and fantasy for a while so that he could come to terms with that had happened.

He needed drugs, and for that, he needed Victor.

Sherlock wrapped himself in a heavy wool coat and flipped the collar up, despite the warmness of the night. He racked his brains as he walked with measured steps through the university, timing each step so that they didn’t belay the pain he was in. Had Victor ever identified his dealers? Sherlock couldn’t remember.

The bank was closed at that time of night, but the ATMs outside were all-hours. Sherlock was loathe to use an ATM, knowing that every fifth second he spent standing in front of one a tiny camera was taking his picture, but he needed cash. He took out as much as his card limit would allow, only a few hundred dollars.

He asked a hooker on a street corner if she knew where he could score. He tipped her for her help, found the abandoned building she had indicated, and slipped inside the opium den with a swish of his coat.

He didn’t come out until his money ran out, two days later.

Still high, but only marginally so, Sherlock walked aimlessly around until noon. His feet took him to the pool where Carl Powers had died, where he and Victor had broken in only a week before for a quick swim in the dark. There was some kind of event going on, a swimming race championship. Sherlock found himself a quiet seat in the back row of the bleachers, pulled his long-forgotten chemistry textbook out of his satchel, and began to study for the exam he had in four hours. He couldn’t remember if he’d been to a single lecture all month.

Victor found him at the pool, handed him a soggy cardboard takeaway box as a peace offering. Sherlock ate, because he could do little else. He allowed Victor to apologise. He told Victor he had deleted everything. (He hadn’t, couldn’t, and wouldn’t ever delete a single piece of Victor.)

Sherlock thought he might’ve been able to forgive him. Not for the rape, because that was inexcusable. But for the reaction, the words he’d used. Maybe they could have continued their symbiosis, though without the camaraderie of before. Then Victor opened his mouth and said those words again, “You are _not_ a man.”

Sherlock decided then that being alone protected him. Friends were nothing but vile, manipulative creatures that took what they needed and then left you on the floor.

“You’ll regret this, Sherlock Holmes.” His name on Victor’s lips, once sweet and honest, felt like a nasty lie.

“I won’t.”

Victor shook his head, stood up from the bleachers. “There’s something wrong with you.”

“There is _nothing_ wrong with me.”

When Victor stormed off, Sherlock hoped that those would be the last words Victor ever heard him say. Instead of going to his exam, Sherlock walked into the bank and emptied his account through a teller. He waved at the surveillance camera on his way out and then walked a complicated route back to the opium den, doubling over his path multiple times to confuse anyone trying to track his movements.

He wasn’t sure anyone was actually watching him. The drugs made him paranoid. Sometimes he thought that a CCTV camera had turned in his direction, but he couldn’t be sure.

He began travelling under the cover of night, through dark alleys and bad neighbourhoods. Word got around that he had deep pockets and he was mugged twice for money and drugs. He was soon out of both, and desperate.

If he hadn’t been addicted when he used with Victor, he was by then. Sometimes it only took a few hours before the detox symptoms started. His life became a game of ‘where can I get my next fix?’

Many of his memories from that time were deleted immediately after they were formed. He smoked and shot up and snorted anything he could get his hands on, paid for the drugs in a thousand degrading ways. His knees were always scabbed from being on them so often, face buried in the crotch of a strange man, giving head for a fix being a commonplace activity on the streets.

A drugs bust in one of the dens he frequented brought the whole ordeal to a screeching halt. He was thrown in a cell at Scotland Yard to dry out with a dozen other junkies. The cops were looking for a murderer among them, someone who had killed a prostitute. Sherlock figured out who it was almost immediately, but he wasn’t about to be known as a rat to his people.

Sherlock had to wait for the other junkies to pass out before he used the single toilet in the cell, crouching over it and shielding himself from any prying eyes with his coat. He’d been having the urge to urinate for hours, but he couldn’t take the chance.

As he crouched over the bowl, hoping to avoid touching it, he realised with a sickening feeling what the cramps he had been experiencing meant. The thick, clotty blood in the basin and caking his underwear made him want to vomit. He yanked up his trousers, thanking god that they were black, and stumbled back to his spot in the corner.

He couldn’t remember that last time he had taken his testosterone injections. He often forgot when he was living with Victor, only took them sporadically to avoid detection. And only when he remembered. Being strung out made him forget that he needed them. And now he was _menstruating_. Something had to be done.

“I have information,” he whispered through the bars of his cage, waving down a young detective. “I can help you catch your killer.”

“What do you get out of it?” the detective asked, looking Sherlock up and down like he was appraising him. Sherlock knew he looked like shit. His hair was long and greasy, his face scrapped and gaunt, his lips cracked and his fingernails dirty and yellowed. Being a junkie wasn’t glamorous.

“I want immunity on the drug charges.” Sherlock licked his cracked lips. “And a phone call.”

Sherlock told the detective about how he had figured out who the murderer was. He looked sceptical, but went back to the den on Sherlock’s information and found the evidence Sherlock said would be there.

“You have quite the brain, miss. If you clean yourself up, you could make a valuable informant to Scotland Yard. It pays pretty well.”

Sherlock flinched at having been misgendered. He deliberately lowered his voice and said, “My name is Sherlock Holmes, and I’m a man.”

The detective at least had the decency to look embarrassed. “Sorry about that, Mr. Holmes. Now let’s see about that phone call, hm?”

Sherlock dialed the number when he was handed the phone; thankfully, he hadn’t deleted it. Each press of his fingers against the buttons felt like a step closer to a death sentence, but he had no choice. The phone rang only twice before it picked up.

“Mycroft,” Sherlock sighed, closing his eyes. “I need help.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Johnny Cash - “Country Boy”  
> **Johnny Cash - “Remember Me”


	3. Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I totally forgot to post this. It's been finished for ages; I'm so sorry. It's finally finished, at least!

“Jesus, Sherlock.”

Sherlock had kept his eyes closed as he relayed the horrid details of the story, leaving out very little. He didn’t want to see John’s face, but he could still _hear_ his reactions— little intakes of breath, the shuffle of his feet on the carpet, the snap of his teeth shutting as he forced back an interruption. After Sherlock had gotten to the part about the holding cell, he paused and finally opened his eyes.

John’s face spoke volumes. The crease between his eyes had deepened, the laugh lines around his mouth smoothed with his deep frown, and a muscle jumped in his cheek as he clenched his jaw.

“Don’t give me that look, John, it ages you,” Sherlock said, trying for humour but falling incredibly flat. His skin was crawling and he craved the drugs more than he had in years— the memories of it bringing his addiction to the surface. “I need a cigarette.” John ignored him.

“Was that the last time you saw him? At the pool?”

John was more perceptive than Sherlock anticipated. He could see that there was more to the story than Sherlock was telling.

“No, it wasn’t. I ran into him and Sebastian after I was re-enrolled. He had, of course, relayed the whole story to Wilkes... with some bias, I imagine.”

John ran a hand across his mouth, scratching at the stubble accumulating around it. The shadow of facial hair made his face look sallow and sunken, as though listening to Sherlock had physically drained him. There was a hunch in his posture, the curling of his limbs inward, unconscious but perceptible.

“I want to kill him.”

“I’d rather you didn’t. The odds of us both getting away with coldblooded murder are minimal.”

John flinched just slightly, blinking as though remembering Magnussen’s finger heading for his eye. “I could make it look like an accident.”

“I appreciate the sentiment. But after all the work I put into solving his father’s murder, I’m afraid connections might be drawn anyway.”

“You _solved_ his father’s murder? After what he _did_ to you?” John snarled, startling Sherlock.

“It wasn’t for him, it was for me. It was one of my first cases with Lestrade after I got out of the rehabilitation facility and I couldn’t afford to leave it be.” Sherlock folded his hands in his lap. “My addiction was an overpowering force in my life, but when I was given the motivation to get clean... I took the opportunity to prove myself.” He looked up and met John’s eyes, seemingly surprised. “You’re not running. You have more questions.”

“I knew your past wasn’t pretty, Sherlock. In for a penny, in for a pound.”

Sherlock swallowed. “You may ask whatever you wish.”

John didn’t answer for a long moment. “What made you realise you had a problem?” was what he settled on, and Sherlock nodded, approving of the question.

“When I started menstruating again, it was what you’d call a ‘wakeup call.’ I realised that I was putting myself in a very dangerous position; drug addicts have a very high rate of physical and sexual assault against them, and the same can be said for transgender individuals. Living on the street only increases that risk. Without access to testosterone, which is surprisingly difficult to get on the street, I was at risk of an unwanted pregnancy should I ever be raped again.”

“Again. Fuck, you shouldn’t have had to think like that.” John shook his head. “I need a drink.”

“There’s some scotch under the sink. It’s ancient, so I doubt it will be any good, but it’s alcohol.”

John gave Sherlock a reproachful look as he stood and trudged into the kitchen. He returned with the bottle and both of their mugs. “Ten years isn’t ancient. And scotch gets better with age, not worse.”

Sherlock shrugged, not caring enough to remember such a detail. John poured a few fingers into each mug and then capped the bottle again, offering Sherlock the mug that John usually drank from. Cautiously, Sherlock took it, holding it between his warm hands. When John had taken a sip from Sherlock’s mug, seemingly without even knowing he had switched them, Sherlock continued.

“I called Mycroft. His techniques seemed cruel at times, but they worked. I was enrolled in a rehab facility that was horribly pedestrian, but it was Mycroft’s promises that most influenced my sobriety. At two weeks sober, I was put back on my testosterone prescription. At six months, I was allowed to begin preparations for a hysterectomy. He called it the stick-and-carrot method.”

“But you were already working cases with Greg, then,” John pointed out, filling in the timeline as best as he could from his limited information.

“In a sense, yes. Detective Inspector Lestrade had his own methods of encouraging my sobriety. I worked for several years as merely an informant, after he took me on as a bit of a pet project.” Sherlock smiled ruefully. “He would occasionally reward me with an interesting cold case on milestones or after I was particularly helpful. It wasn’t until I graduated from university that I was considered an official consultant for Scotland Yard.”

John looked at Sherlock with something akin to respect in his eyes. It was the last thing Sherlock was expecting. “You worked incredibly hard to get to where you are.”

Sherlock took a sip from John’s mug, frowning at the unpleasant burn of scotch. “I did some incredibly stupid things. I lowered myself to the existence of a desperate, drug-crazed, homeless, quasi-prostitute. Much of the experience I deleted from sheer shame.” He took another sip, enjoyed the burn a little. “I was high-risk. Any number of things could have happened to me that I don’t even know about.”

John downed the rest of his scotch from Sherlock’s mug and put it down on the table next to the bottle. “It doesn’t change anything.”

Sherlock’s frown deepened. “I could have any number of communicable diseases.”

John’s lips quirked up as he asked, “Do you?” He obviously knew the answer.

“No. Mycroft had me tested for everything under the sun.” Sherlock put down his own mug, still half-full. “I was lucky in many respects.”

“Then why should it matter to me now?”

“I flunked out of school to be a drug addict. I have never been what one would call mentally stable, and my ability to hold a romantic relationship is entirely in question.” John stood from his chair and took a heavy step toward Sherlock. “Not to mention the stigma attached to the partners of transgender—”

Sherlock was cut off by John’s lips on his own for the third time that night. John’s hands, warm and moist on either side of his face, cupped his jaw without the slightest hint of an intermittent tremor. John pulled back after a long moment, knocking their foreheads together and opening his eyes to meet Sherlock’s.

“You may be a flunky drug addict detective and an insufferable know-it-all, but I am widower to an international assassin, an adrenaline junkie suffering from PTSD, and the daftest sod to ever live.” John laughed gently and pulled away, dropping his hands from Sherlock’s face to his shoulders, squeezing gently. “We’re quite the pair. But we were _made_ for each other. I’ve just been too blind to see it until recently.”

Sherlock huffed. “You could have your pick of partners—”

“There is nothing wrong with you. If I can have my pick, I choose you.” John paused. “If you’ll have me.”

A heavy weight lifted from Sherlock’s chest. “We haven’t even been on a date, John. Isn’t that the proper order of things?” He smirked, relaxing for the first time since they’d arrived back at Backer Street.

John shook his head. “We’ve never been traditional, have we?”

“Hm, no.”

For their fourth kiss, they met in the middle.


End file.
